


Four Times Artemis Tries to Convince Holly to go with him to Mars and the One Time he Didn’t

by iesnoth



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: Four Times, Gen, not Hartemis, one time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25555858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iesnoth/pseuds/iesnoth
Summary: We know Artemis has gone to Mars (as of the Fowl Twins series), but why did he go, and why didn't his elven best friend go with him? As it turns out, not for lack of trying on Artemis's part...
Relationships: Artemis Fowl II & Holly Short
Comments: 11
Kudos: 30





	Four Times Artemis Tries to Convince Holly to go with him to Mars and the One Time he Didn’t

The first time was in the Netherlands. It was a trip they’d been planning for a while: Artemis would meet Holly at the oak tree near Tara, and they would take a clandestine trip to the Netherlands for a couple days. Artemis had proposed the idea months ago, but she’d thought it a pipe dream. Then Foaly told her the Council had OK’d her leave of absence.

Getting leave to go topside didn’t surprise her. Ever since the Council found out Artemis was not only back from the dead, but a _clone_ , they had dropped all subtlety in their monitoring of the boy. They required Artemis to come to Haven for health examinations every three months, Holly visited and filed a report on him every two, and he sent a blood work-up every week. There was a small sect of the government who believed the clone Artemis was their property, and they should reclaim him for permanent, more invasive study. However, due to Artemis’s track record for being annoyingly useful and Butler being Butler, no one had made good on these threats.

But this wasn’t one of her bimonthly visits. Her next one wasn’t due for another two weeks, and she was never allowed to stay more than a day.

“You’re going to be testing some new urban camouflage Artemis and I have been working on,” he said.

Holly laughed. She’d been wondering what all this was about, and _that_ sounded like Artemis. “I’m your guinea pig,” she said with a small bow.

Now at Tara, she snagged an acorn from a low-hanging branch of the ancient oak and tucked it in her pocket, then jogged over to the waiting Bentley.

“Shielded, Commodore?” Artemis said over his spectacles as the side door opened seemingly on its own. Artemis called her by her new title so much he barely used her name anymore. It got kind of annoying, but she suspected he did it because he was proud of her, so she didn’t comment.

“Yes, Mr. Fowl,” she said, kicking her overnight bag into the floorboards. “You never know, there may be a kidnapper about. What are these?” She snatched the spectacles from his nose. “You don’t need glasses.”

“No,” he agreed, gingerly retrieving them. “I’m working on programming NANNI into them, for Myles.”

“Ah.” Something about his reply bothered her, be it the sad way he smiled down at the glasses case, or the tone of finality in his words. It made her uneasy.

Her unease mounted every time his sad smile made an appearance, because Artemis didn’t _do_ sad. He didn’t do happy, either, more often a smug satisfaction or neutral contentment. So for him to mask one uncommon emotion with another made her very suspicious. Her gut reaction was to ask for a blood work-up right now to see if something were wrong with his new body, but she stifled her paranoia. This was sort of a vacation, after all, and he was normal in all other respects.

Their first day in The Hague he gave her what looked like a child’s headband with a little blue bow on it. She sneered at it, turning it over in her hands but not putting it on.

“The bow is, in actuality, a holocloaker,” he explained.

“But why a bow at _all,_ Arty.”

“Because the purpose of this camouflage is not to be unseen, but to blend in,” he said, checking some diagnostics on his phone, “and while I could program a 150 centimeter tall female for this exercise, the illusion would break as soon as you threw a punch.”

“You say that like punching is something I do often,” she protested, then punched him in the knee.

An hour later she walked down Frederik Hendriklaan in broad daylight, unshielded. She hadn’t been able to see her holo-self in the hotel mirror, something to do with light refraction and physics, but Artemis did show her a picture of what she should look like.

“That’s Beckett,” she said, deadpan.

“Yes,” he replied, equally calm. “In a dress. I wasn’t going to build a human rig from scratch.”

Old ladies waved at Beckett-Holly from park benches and a young couple encouraged her to pet their enthusiastic Scottish terrier. On the technical side of things, the only hiccup was avoiding walking too near windows so their ruse wouldn’t be revealed.

“We should do this more often,” she said, accepting the ice cream she’d ordered from a street vendor.

At this Artemis smiled, sadly.

She turned around and crossed in front of him but Artemis, eyes on the hologram read-out on his phone, almost ran into her.

“OK Mud boy, what’s going on?” She planted her free hand on her hip.

He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “What’s going on is we’re conducting a _secret fairy experiment_ ,” he whispered, but with a lilt to his voice so anyone who overheard would think he was playing a game with his little sister.

“Not that.” She sighed, and her frown eased from annoyed to concerned. “I know you, Artemis. I can tell something more is on your mind.”

He put his phone in his pocket, looked over her head, and nodded at Butler who watched them from across the street. “Come with me,” he said.

Holly barely contained her impatience as they ordered lunch from a delicatessen, took a bus to a park, and found a secluded spot. Three times she almost accused him of trying to dodge her before catching Butler’s eye and calming down. When the manservant made a point of giving them privacy in the park, sitting out of earshot but in their eye line, Holly’s suspicion bubbled over.

“What wrong?” she asked, not bothering to unwrap her sandwich. “Are you alright? Healthy? Did something happen at home?”

“No, no,” he said quickly, the sad smile fixed now. “Nothing like that. Good news, actually.”

She watched him with wide eyes, unconvinced. He laughed when he noticed her expression.

“Truthfully! I’d planned on telling you, well, asking you on our last night here, but—“ he inhaled deeply, grounding himself.

She raised an eyebrow. Now this sounded like something else entirely, something she had not picked up on at _all_.

“I’m going to Mars,” he said.

Her derailing train of thought suddenly sprouted jet engines and shot the moon, leaving her tracks barren.

“You mean— you’re sending a robot?”

“The robot launched in the ship prototype months ago. It hasn’t reached Mars, obviously, but the self-winding engine is working perfectly. It was never the point to send a robot, that’s been done before. No, the goal is human passengers. Well, human and—“ he looked at her.

“Me?” she pointed to herself. “The _Commodore_?”

Artemis sighed. “I’m sorry, I have to turn the hologram off, it’s very distracting and this is a serious conversation.” Thankfully, they were safely ensconced in a copse of bushes, only visible through the one entrance Butler guarded.

“Yes,” he said when she was once again herself. “Five years is nothing to you, and I’m sure Foaly could come up with a sensible explanation for you to come with me—“

“Foaly,” she said, gritting her teeth. “He knew about this, didn’t he? This trip wasn’t just to test your urban camouflage!”

Artemis shrugged. “I’m sure he suspects, but he hasn’t collaborated with me. This is a personal project. As for this weekend, I simply took advantage of the privacy and beautiful locale to approach a delicate subject.”

“And you’re so sure Foaly would take your side on this?”

“Foaly rarely takes my side on anything,” Artemis pointed out. “What matters is, are you with me?”

Her brows knit together as she seriously considered this question. Regardless of whether she took his offer or not, did she support this crazy venture? Going into space, millions of miles from medical care, relying only on the fellow crew for sanity and community: it sounded terrifying. And yet, she had that tight excitement in her stomach she got whenever she took down a wily suspect or executed a perfect barrel roll. It was all too much at once.

Artemis saw the conflict in her eyes.

“Take as much time as you need,” he said.

She nodded, her gaze dropping to her lap.

They both stared at their unwrapped lunches, appetites gone.

* * *

The second time was during Artemis’s bimonthly check-up. This month they met on Fowl estate, now the Sunny Times Farming Community. Artemis was the only Fowl left living in the ancestral home: his parents thought he stayed behind to make sure their new tenants adhered to their eco-friendly mission statement, his friends thought he had too much history in the house to leave. Now Holly suspected his attachment had less to do with the manor, and more to do with the rocket ship in the barn.

To be fair, he didn’t live in the manor all the time: his laboratory had long since been moved, and he wasn’t one for community living. When he wasn’t sleeping on the makeshift bunk in the barn (pre-clone Artemis would never, Holly thought), he spent the night at Butler’s seaside cottage. Today she flew into the aforementioned barn, not unshielding until the strangely pneumatic doors closed behind her.

“Commodore!” Artemis’s greeting was muffled by wherever he was inside the ship. Though the design was distinctly Artemis, a dark grey color palette highlighted with gold, she saw elements of fairy engineering in the spacecraft. She wasn’t sure Artemis could invent anything without the People’s influence anymore; he was a part of them now.

And he’s leaving, she thought.

He slid out from some secret place under the craft. He wore a bespoke suit, though divested of his jacket, and the sleeves on the black button down were rolled up to the elbow. She wondered if the genius considered this “work clothes.”

“You know the drill,” she said, retrieving a swab and vial from her hip satchel and ignoring the spaceship.

“Right on to business then,” he said with an air of teasing.

She propelled herself up with her wings so they were at eye level. “Open up.”

He obliged, and she swabbed the inside of his cheek, then stoppered the swab in the vial. She pocketed it and withdrew an electronic syringe the size and length of her pinkie. She held out a hand, and Artemis placed his hand in her open palm.

“Any problems since our last meeting?” she asked.

“Do you mean the Netherlands?” He was prying.

She pretended not to notice. “I mean two months ago. Have there been any changes?”

He raised one eyebrow. “No.” She pushed the button on the end of the syringe and a needle popped out, stole a few drops of blood from his hand, then retreated, sealing the tube shut behind it.

“No sudden loss of energy, or insomnia?” Blue sparks danced over the tiny pinprick. She didn’t have to heal such a small wound, but she always did.

“My energy levels are fine, and I have no more insomnia than I’ve ever had.” He held up his newly healed hand. “And before you ask, my appetite has been consistent with no strange cravings, I've had no mood swings, no phantom pains, and no growth spurts or increased aging. But you’d know all that if you’d learn to read the diagnostics on the side of that syringe.”

She rolled her eyes, making a great show of putting the syringe away without looking at it before folding her wings and dropping to the ground.

He caught her gaze and smiled like he was letting her in on a secret. “Come, Commodore. Let me give you a tour.”

Holly huffed. She shouldn’t encourage him— after all, didn’t she know what her answer had to be? But she was curious, and at the very least she could trade any information she gleaned about the ship to Foaly for upgrades in her tech.

Artemis waited for her at the threshold, his expression guarded. Taking a steadying breath, she jogged over to catch up.

The interior of the ship matched the exterior: sleek and utilitarian, though the colors inside were a cool, calming blue. Artemis had probably done research on what colors put people at ease, an asset for space travel.

“This is the galley,” he said, “and the central hub of the ship. The bridge is here,” he opened a door in the nose of the craft. There were few buttons, but the dash was a span of black plasma screens which Holly recognized from the holo-displays in Foaly’s center of operations. There were four ergonomic chairs in the bridge: the captain’s and co-captain’s chairs, each with their own steering column, and two on either side of these chairs, so all four were arranged in an arc. She noticed each seat was large enough to house Butler’s bulk, but had adjustable height and seatbelt for a fairy passenger.

“I assume you see the influences I took from the People,” he said, running his hands over the dormant dash. “I also took some inspiration from the sci-fi films Myles has become smitten with. He actually helped design this room, and the laboratory.”

“You’ve told your family about this?” Holly asked as they moved on.

Artemis pursed his lips before he spoke. “I’ve told Butler.”

“And he’s OK with this?”

He shrugged. “He’s coming with me. And he’s very excited about this:” he opened a pneumatic sliding door to an exercise room. It housed an elliptical and other resistance-based equipment, since anything relying on weight would be moot in the zero gravity of space. “It will be imperative for all the crew to exercise daily in order to prevent muscle atrophy in the vacuum of space,” he explained. “Butler greatly anticipates me having to use a gym for once.”

“Crew?” Holly repeated, passing up the chance to take a jab at the young man’s less than impressive physique. “Who else is coming besides you and Butler?”

He actually looked hurt, and she wondered if she’d pushed her avoidance of his invitation too far. “If you’re going to continue to ignore the obvious,” he said, his voice clipped, “I’ve invited No.1 to come along. After his exploits on the moon, I thought this to be a natural expansion of his studies. He’s conferring with Qwan about whether they could do without him for so long. I also plan on inviting Juliet, if she ever comes home from the mystery assignment Butler won’t tell me about.”

Each of the four living compartments had an upright bed attached to the wall, a porthole, and a tiny, adjustable desk which could be accessed from the bed. If it could be called a bed. Soft, cream-colored, and puffy, they looked like cocoons. Under the zipper and layers of down were straps on the inside to keep the sleeper in place, as well as a control panel to adjust the firmness of the mattress and tightness of the straps. These space explorers would travel in comfort.

“Why only four cubicles, if you’re anticipating five?”

He smiled down at her. “I’m not anticipating five. I assumed someone would say no, and I haven’t invited everyone at once.”

Based on the series of events as he’d told them to her, he’d asked her first (excluding Butler). She wanted to be flattered, but her heart hurt.

“Artemis, I can’t go.”

His carefully maintained smile shrank. “Because of your career?”

“Don’t say it like I prioritize climbing some corporate ladder,” she said, turning away from the cubicles and back toward the galley. “And yes, it is my career. It’s my life, Artemis. I couldn’t live in space! Where would I perform the Ritual?”

“We could bring a store of acorns,” he suggested. “You could plant them on an asteroid: maybe burying them on a foreign planet would grant you different powers.”

“This isn’t one of Myles’s sci-fi movies, Artemis.”

“No, it’s better,” he argued. He crouched down to her level. She hated when he did that. It made her feel condescended to, and she hated looking him in the eyes when they fought. “Anything is possible out there,” he waved to the ceiling with one hand. “We could discover new worlds, meet new species, challenge the very fundamentals of science! We could change the universe for the better.”

She placed a hand on his left cheek, her thumb tracing under his left eye. It was blue now, forever reminding her of the friend she’d lost, then regained.

“I’d like to think I’m doing that now,” she countered. “In Haven, protecting others.”

Artemis stared into her eyes for a moment, searching for answers or perhaps for a chink in her resolve. Finally, he stood, breaking her contact. “We still have the physical tests to complete before you have to return home,” he said.

Holly followed him out, eyes on his feet as he tiptoed through the thin walkway that was a comfortable width for her. She paused at the entrance of the ship as he strode the distance of the barn, walking away from her with a long gait she’d struggle to keep up with on foot. Was she losing him again?

* * *

The third time was over a video call. They hadn’t talked since their spat in the spaceship a few weeks before, and Holly’s pride hadn’t allowed her to call and make peace without a different reason for contacting him.

That reason finally came when a bizarre string of kidnappings plagued Haven. The kidnapper left a carving of a human baby in the place of the taken child, in a subversion of the old changeling myth.

“Wood carvings?” Artemis clarified, leaning back in his custom-made desk chair and cradling his mug of tea against his chest.

Holly nodded. She sat at her desk as well, eating her lunch. Even though she was a commodore— or because she was— she didn’t have many friends around the office. They liked her and respected her command, but they all had their own cliques and she didn’t think it wise to join one and upset the peace of the bullpen.

“I assume Foaly has already run diagnostics and determined where the wood was harvested?”

She stabbed a clump of salad with a two-pronged fork. “Yeah. Each of the four carvings were from different trees. The first was fir, then pine, then oak, then an apple tree.”

He took a long sip of tea, staring off camera as he thought. “What were the ages of the trees? Was the apple tree diseased?”

The elf scooted her tupperware off the files she’d truthfully only skimmed through. “It was.” She frowned at him, but he continued to stare into the middle distance stoically, waiting for her to ask. “How did you know?”

“Because people don’t typically chop down apple trees unless they are decrepit or structurally unsound.” He looked at her then, and there was a mischievous glint in his eye. She paused in her chewing.

“What?”

“I was wondering… once I’m in space, how will I keep those ever-so-important check-ups to monitor my unstable clone body?”

She snorted, loudly, so as to annoy him with how ridiculous she thought he was. “Unstable?” she said, covering her full mouth as she talked. “For years you’ve been insufferably smug about how _un-_ unstable your unique body is.”

Truth be told, she’d also wondered how Artemis 2.0 would handle the strain of space travel. If his synthetic biology were to malfunction— she didn’t want to think about the myriad of ways Artemis could go mad or worse, with Butler helpless to heal him. She’d had half a mind to reveal Artemis’s insane venture to the Council and imply heavily they should ground him, even incarcerate him in Haven, until _they_ determined he was space-ready. Which, with how decisive the Council was, would be never.

But Artemis had been right all those years when he said his new body functioned perfectly. In fact, free of the chemical imbalance and mutations of his first one, Clone Artemis was closer to how he would have been if he’d lived a normal, magic-free life.

“On Earth, yes,” he allowed. “But in the volatile gravities of space and other planets? I could go under some violent mutation!”

She poked at her food as if there were something very interesting in the dregs of leaves and vinaigrette dressing. “Then I’ll advise the Council to up the amount of reports per week you have to send while you’re gone,” she said.

“A report won’t help me in a crisis,” he protested. “I’ll need fairy magic.”

She frowned. “I’m not your nurse, Artemis. Neither is any other fairy. If this is really your best argument for why I should run away to Mars, I overestimated your powers of persuasion.” She tapped a finger on the desktop and Artemis, who’d been sufficiently cowed, straightened. “You didn’t answer my question. Why does it matter that the apple tree was diseased?”

Artemis tipped his head back with an exasperated sigh. “We can both agree your fairy isn’t cutting down the trees, yes?”

She shrugged, though she had to admit it was unlikely. Haven had some highly regulated trees, but the wood matched the surface species, which were much too large for any fairy to fell alone. She supposed it could be a multi-fairy scheme, but it seemed laughable for a fairy to manage to get topside only to mutilate trees.

“And it makes less sense to cut down four different kinds of trees and waste all that wood,” she said. “That’s why our working theory is the tree’s species have a special significance to the kidnapper.”

“A noble effort, but I believe there’s a simpler solution,” he said, keeping eye contact like a patient teacher. She wished she could punch him through the communicator. “Where else, besides a forest, can one find an assortment of _travel sized wood_?” he asked.

Holly screwed her eyebrows together in thought for a hard minute, then smacked herself in the forehead. “Of course, a woodpile.”

“Yes!” Artemis praised her, genuinely happy she’d caught on. “Humans cut down healthy trees like birch and oak for fuel, but they spare fruit-bearing trees unless there is something wrong with them.”

“So the perp stole their material from a human’s wood pile,” the commodore summarized. “We’re probably looking for a fairy who’s been topside in the past few months and brought back some bulky luggage.”

“Sounds like a lot of long, boring hours in front of a security screen array,” he bemoaned, typing on his personal computer. “Though you might save some time if you start here.”

Holly’s desktop computer dinged with an email alert. It was from Artemis, a list of potential suspects. She’d had thirty-seven, he’d whittled it down to five.

“Where did you get these names?” she asked. She knew Artemis and Foaly had a hacking war ongoing— it was common knowledge at this point— but he’d never hacked her personal devices.

He pointed to her own desk, and the files strewn across it. “I can read upside down.”

Holly smirked, but swept the files into a drawer.

“I’ll have Foaly look into these fairies’ recent travel plans,” she said. “In the mean time, I’ll put some uniforms on their tails ASAP.”

Artemis watched her with a hard-lined brow as she forwarded the list to Foaly with a short debrief of their conversation.

“I thought you were smarter than this, Commodore,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Well I could look into their travel histories myself, but to be honest, Foaly is better with computers than I am.”

He chuckled, his brow easing. “I mean, if you’d worked on this case for another hour, you would have come to this conclusion yourself. This isn’t challenging enough to consult me.” He squinted at her and, to her eternal mortification, she looked away. “What is your real reason for calling me, Commodore Short?”

She met his gaze again, defiantly. “Because you’re so eager to show off your vast intellect that you’ll do my job for me.”

He nodded, his mug hovering under his nose. “You do realize that, after I leave, these little chats will be much harder to come by.”

Holly swallowed hard. She hadn’t realized, but to be fair, her life didn’t revolve around Artemis Fowl. Nor did she want it to, which was part of the reason she turned him down. But the idea she couldn’t just pick up a communicator and see him any time made her throat constrict.

When she didn’t reply he leaned forward, closer to the camera on his tablet. “I’ve picked up the phone to call you half a dozen times,” he confided. “My apologies, Commodore. This voyage is of utmost importance to me, but I never meant for it to hinder our friendship. Especially not now.”

She opened her mouth to ask him to elaborate, to say she forgave him, but her computer dinged again. She opened the e-mail, this one from Foaly.

“Did he find something of import?” Artemis asked, leaning back again.

“Oh yeah,” she said, scanning the attached images. “Much import.”

* * *

The fourth time in the American West, during the sting operation to find the Changeling Napper. Foaly’s e-mail had been the itinerary of a gnome named Rumi Mush, a fungus farmer on the south side of Haven. Agricultural workers received more topside passes than most other professions in the fairy world, because though Haven’s technology was great, there were some things (like fertilizer and new seeds) one had to get from the source. Mush had been to California a week before the kidnappings began, and the surveillance photos showed Mush bringing a large biohazard container topside. It wasn’t uncommon for his trade, but Mush himself didn’t work with biohazards like spores or bacteria. But that wasn’t the smoking gun.

Foaly had done a media sweep of the area. Two days ago, in the same little town where the A5 shoot let out in California, a human child had been abducted from its crib. A wood carving of a human child had been left in its place.

The LEP raided his house on the outskirts of the gnome district and found not only the four missing fairy babes crying in a locked closet, but the human child in a cage in the basement. There were more cages as well: apparently, Mush was putting together a menagerie.

When Holly put out a warrant for his arrest, Mush was on another surface run. They alerted border patrol, but he’d passed them hours before. Giving orders to detain him if he came back through, Commodore Short and a team of LEP Retrieval sprites suited up and took the fastest shuttle to the surface. The sprites complained the cramped quarters wrinkled her wings, and while Holly didn’t dignify them with an answer, she smiled to herself.

When they got to the surface, Mush hadn’t returned. To Holly, this meant either he knew somehow he’d been made and was on the lam, or he’d been caught in the act by humans. Both were worst case scenarios. Using intel about which babies lived nearest the fairy mound, the team split into three pairs, each taking a potential target.

“If you hear sirens, follow them,” she instructed over the comms.

She and her partner approached their assigned house downwind. Gnomes had excellent senses of smell; if their quarry caught a whiff of them, they were done. After all, he had the advantage of being magic-less and so could hide inside the house, not to mention the hostages he could take. She crept up to a window of the one-story brick house. All the windows were dark, but she looked in anyway, turning on her night vision.

“No movement,” she reported. “Check the other windows.”

Just then, a voice call alert flashed in the corner of her helmet, the icon ice blue.

“Not the time, Artemis,” she whispered, side-stepping a tipped over flower pot on the stoop of the porch.

“On the contrary, Commodore,” the Irish accent sounded even more pretentious over the phone, “you’ll want to hear what I have to say for once. The house you’re investigating is devoid of human occupants. Ms. Gregston won an all-expenses paid trip to the Bahamas this weekend, and she’s left her infant daughter with her parents.”

“How fortunate,” she snarked, straightening as the tension melted off her. “So I’m guessing Mush isn’t here either?”

“Oh,” she could practically hear his smirk stretch into a grin. “I wouldn’t say that. Look in the front window.”

Holly peeked over the cracking paint of the window sill into the front room. There, hog-tied inside a ring of candles, was Rumi Mush. Outside of the wax circle was a note, written in a woman’s hand,

“Come on in.”

“I’ll see you at the fairy mound,” Artemis said, then hung up the phone.

As her team escorted a handcuffed Mush into a police shuttle, Holly slipped into the woods to meet the hulking figure in the shadows.

“Hide and seek was never your game, eh big man?” she joked, tapping Butler on the thigh with her first.

“I was quite good at being ‘it’,” he said with a grin.

Holly turned her gaze on Artemis, who looked entirely too smug.

“What were you thinking, interfering with LEP business like this?”

The grin shrunk a few teeth. “If I hadn’t interfered, you would have had a hostage situation on your hands.”

“I’m not complaining,” she pointed out. “I’m asking what were you thinking. Why this case? Why now?” It had been less than forty-eight hours since their lunch conversation, but the boy— no, man— looked different now. Emotionally. Though he smiled and his shoulders were sloped back in a relaxed stance, her helmet sensors showed an elevated blood pressure and too-even breathing. Like he was regulating it manually.

She took off her helmet, tucking it under her arm before taking his hand. “What’s happened, Artemis?”

He looked up at his oldest friend, who coughed into one gargantuan fist. “I’ll go— wait by those trees. You know the ones.”

When he’d gone, Artemis sighed, his smile now tired. “I can’t beat Foaly’s sensors, can I?”

“Why would you try?” She activated her wings so she could hover at his eye level. “Does it have something to do with the space thing? Why are you so hung up on this Artemis? Why are you in such a hurry—“

“Hurry? I’ve been building this ship for four years!”

“And you can’t wait a little longer? You’re still young, your brothers are still young. If you leave now, you’ll miss most of their childhood.”

“All the more reason to leave now,” he joked.

“This all seems very reactionary for you, Arty. I’ve never known you to make such a big decision so flippantly.”

“Apparently I’m supposed to be flippant. Flippant is normal.”

Artemis ran his free hand through his hair— a rare gesture for him, as it mussed his quaff— and pursed his lips to keep himself from talking further (another rarity).

But that last word was all Holly needed. It was a word Artemis seldom used unless he talked about one specific person. “It’s your mother.”

Holly led him to the coffee house in the shuttle terminal. They got a lot of sideways glances, but Artemis had been on multiple Haven talk shows since his rebirth, so there was no outright alarm.

“It didn’t begin when I resurrected,” he said as she set a earthenware cup of hickory coffee in front of him. “It didn’t even start after Hybras, it was well before then. I think Mother has considered herself a failure as a parent since Father’s return, and she’s been trying to rectify the problem— me— ever since.” He wrapped his hands around the cup, but didn’t lift it to drink. “First her behaviors were what I considered to be typical for a mother: buying me clothes I didn’t like, disapproving of my language, wanting me to socialize with people my own age. But when Myles showed signs of taking after me, it changed. Escalated.” He sighed deeply, and Holly realized this was hard for him, that he most likely had never voiced these thoughts aloud. She covered his hands with hers, but remained silent.

He took another breath, then went on. “She was already going to university for psychology and mental biology, so she took up some child psych classes. After her first class, she sent the twins to a private boarding school on the other side of Dublin. I know part of her reason was so the twins would be more socialized than I am. A noble goal to be sure.” He stared at their joined hands, a crease forming between his brows. “When the twins were suspended for criminal recklessness, I’ve never seen Mother so upset. Not only with the twins, but me as well. She would never accuse me of corrupting my brothers, of course, but after that she monitored me constantly. Every day she asked me probing questions, and I could feel her diagnosing me, trying to suss out how I was broken.” He pressed his eyes shut.

"Yesterday she came to the manor: apparently Myles had used explosives to irrigate the garden. No one was hurt, but she immediately assumed I'd known about it, given him permission to do it. But she didn't call me when he won the Junior Scientists Award I helped him with, or when Beckett finally passed 4th grade math after months of my tutoring. I'm only responsible when they're being deviant." He opened his eyes again and they were watery, the icy blue irises melting. "Do you know what it feels like, to have someone you love and admire try to change the fundamentals of who you are? To have someone make you question if you’re sensible or even real?”

Now Holly did speak. “Yes,” she said, squeezing his hands. “In my early days as an officer, Commander Root and my coworkers challenged every decision I made. If I showed emotion, I was acting like a girl. If I did something right, I was finally ‘thinking like a man.’”

“The commander said that to you?” Artemis asked, his shoulders visibly tensing.

She shrugged. “It was the way at the time. He apologized later, and no one on the force would dare make those comments now, but back then I was jeered at for acting like a woman, but rejected if I bucked gender roles. It was wrong of them to treat me as if my differences were flaws.” She said the next words gently, but firmly. “And it’s wrong of Angeline, too.”

He shook his head. “Your colleagues were prejudiced against your biology. I made horrible choices in the past, and Mother believes it’s her job to pick up the pieces.”

“You wearing Armani suits everyday and calling her ‘Mother’ doesn’t make you an evil dictator, Artemis,” she argued. “Your mother is upset because you are who you are independent of her influence. You took care of her when you were ten years old. You were saving the planet by fourteen. If she can’t see the amazing man you’ve become, it’s her who needs a shrink.”

The human blinked, then smiled, one side of his mouth pulling up higher than the other. “See? This is why I need you to come to Mars with me. Who else would put me in my place?”

She withdrew her hands and frowned. Her stomach fell like she’d eaten a meal of lead. “Wait. Was this all a ploy to convince me to go to Mars?”

He tilted his head at her, then laughed when he processed her question. “No, no it’s all sadly true. I must still have a way to go if you believe I’d tell such an egregious lie to trick you into running away with me. Or perhaps, you’re simply arrogant.”

Holly shared his laugh, her stomach light again. “Even though we shouldn’t change who we are to match someone else’s expectations, there’s always room for personal growth.”

He finally took a drink of coffee, then winced when he found it was room temperature. “In all seriousness, the offer still stands. If there’s even a part of you that doubts, please think on it.” He produced a fairy credit chip to pay for their drinks, and Holly didn’t bother asking where he’d gotten it. He stood, still smiling sadly at her. The emotion was become a constant for him, and she didn’t like it. “The launch is scheduled for two weeks from tomorrow. Please let me know by then.”

She nodded numbly, her brain scrabbling to answer the unspoken question of whether she did doubt, when her thoughts finally snagged on two vital words.

“Two weeks?”

* * *

Holly arrived at the private airstrip in Italy two weeks later. She’d had to call in two and a half favors to get authorization to go topside without divulging why, but the mountain views alone made it worth the hassle.

The mountain-hedged valley belonged to Giovanni Zito, who’d become a close confidante of the younger Artemis. He was one of the few Artemis had told about the self-winding rocket project, though Holly suspected this was so he could have access to the valley. In an odd turn of events, the launch pad was built not on the landing strip, but in a copse of hot springs in a craggy outcropping to the west.

Fifty meters away and twenty meters up on the strange launch pad, Artemis’s ship gleamed in the noonday sun. As she approached, the polished titanium alloys shone in a way Holly could only describe as optimistic. The name of the ship was embossed on the cone in sans-serif script: _I_ _gniculus ex Decorum_. She smirked to stem the tears pricking her eyes. Artemis was being sentimental. She never thought she’d see the day.

A couple humans she didn’t recognize circled the spacecraft, squinting through the glare and marking on clipboards. She hovered above the craft, still shielded, until they cleared the hatch, then flew through.

She heard Artemis before she saw him.

“I appreciate your concern _signor_ ,” she heard Artemis say from the bridge, “but I’m confident in my calculations.”

“As am I, _il mio giovane amico_.” Zito’s accent was accentuated by the speaker phone. “But you’re not running a test, you’re risking your life. I’d like it to be as slight a risk as possible. And don’t worry, the engineers have signed multiple NDAs. If any scrap of their future research resembles your magnum opus in any way, they’ll be paying for it from jail cells for the rest of their lives.”

Holly dropped to the ground and took off her helmet as she walked down the narrow galley path. She looked up and around the cylindrical compartment: this would be Artemis’s home for the next five years. It could have been her home, too. She snorted softly and shook her head.

“I appreciate your loyalty, Giovanni,” Artemis chuckled. “Though if this technology succeeds, I plan to make the blueprints open source. I suppose as long as they’re here, I can consider their opinions.”

“For once, I hope I am wrong and there is no need for concern.”

Holly knocked on the ovular doorframe.

“Ah,” Artemis said from the captain’s chair, his back to her. “I have a guest. I’ll see you in five years, my friend.”

“Call before then, you son of a jackal!”

Now he laughed. “Of course, _ciao_.”

As soon as the call ended, the doors behind Holly slid shut. Artemis turned the captain’s chair to face her. His blue eyes sparked with a rare energy, a kiddish glee he never showed in his actual boyhood. Her eyes widened when she noticed his space suit. It looked almost exactly like a padded, fire retardant LEP containment suit, except light blue and grey instead of green and brown. For some reason, the connection made her chest clench.

“Commodore! Thank you for coming.” He pivoted the co-pilot’s seat toward her. “It means a lot. Please,” he motioned to the chair.

Holly flew over, not trusting her legs. “To be honest, I almost didn’t,” she said. “You were so hellbent on my coming along, I thought you might commit an encore kidnapping.”

To his credit, Artemis recognized the joke. “As tempting as that is, I couldn’t handle twelve hours of angry fairy, not to mention sixty _months_.”

“Damn right.” She hoped he didn’t hear her throat constrict on the last word. To be honest, she did have doubts about staying behind. She’d actually packed a bag before coming to the surface, just in case she decided to go after all. In the end, she’d forced herself to leave it behind.

“Who else is in the farewell party?” she asked before she fell too far down the rabbit hole of doubt.

“Besides Zito’s surprise inspectors? No one. Butler is talking with Juliet at the moment, but I wasn’t allowed in on the call as it might blow her cover somehow.”

“What _is_ she doing?”

“Not a clue.”

A pause.

“So— no family, then?” she asked.

He shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “No, there never would have been. Mother will be livid, of course— this will be the third time I’ve left without warning, and will be my longest departure to date. I left them all digital messages, though, and a way to call me in space, solar flares willing. Speaking of—“ he leaned behind him and plucked what looked like a high tech monocle from the dash. It was, in all actuality, a tiny screen held in front of the eye by a wire attached to an ear piece.

“It can also interface with other mobile devices,” he explained, “but only the monocle’s receptors can pick up on this ship’s signal.”

She accepted it, cradling the hardware in her lap. It would fit her perfectly, she could tell. He made this specifically for her, which he wouldn’t have done if he’d believed she was coming with him. Even though she’d rejected his offer, he still wanted to share this adventure with her. Why did her decision, which was so obvious in the beginning, feel like a betrayal now?

“I’m sorry.” The words cut through Holly’s fog of thought. She looked up at him, confused.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “for making this separation harder on you than it should be. I never should have been so insistent. I was so consumed with how much I needed you— still need you. You’ve always been the best of me.” He laid his head back against the head rest, staring up at the ceiling. “But I made your decision all about me, and I’m sorry.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Haven needs you. And though they don’t know it, humanity needs fairies like you, too. To put myself over the needs of the many shows I haven’t grown as much as I thought.”

She pursed her lips. Though he was haughty and smug, Artemis was one of the most humble humans she’d ever met. He was always the first to admit his shortcomings, and he constantly worked to change them. Sure he was a pain, but he was also her best friend, and rightfully so.

“I wanted to go,” she admitted. When he squinted at her, she clarified. “With you, to Mars. Going to another planet isn’t something I’d thought about before, but if you were going to space it seemed natural I’d be going, too. We’re part of each other, Artemis,” she gestured between them. “Two sides of the same coin. Even though you don’t have my eye anymore, that hasn’t changed. And that’s part of the reason I can’t go. The two of us, sharing close quarters for so long? We’d either kill each other, or—” she took a deep, steadying breath. “I told you once I couldn’t do without you.”

Mention of that strange chapter of their friendship made Artemis go very still, and she wondered off-handedly if he was holding his breath.

“And I haven’t had to do without you, for years. We haven’t been apart longer than a month since…” she bit her lip. Thinking about the six months he had been dead still hurt. “But though we’re stronger together, we don’t _need_ each other. You’ve always had that spark of decency, even before I came along.”

He grinned. “So you approve of the ship’s name?”

She shrugged. “It seems a bit self aggrandizing.”

“That wasn’t my intention, it was supposed to be a dedication to—“

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, her coy smile cutting him off.

“You’re joking,” he realized, his frustration deflating.

“Yes, and I love the name.”

His gaze dropped to the communicator in her hands. “Now I hope more than ever those are functional.”

“What’s this?” She tilted her head. “Artemis Fowl isn’t sure of his programming abilities?”

He rewarded her with a classic vampiric grin. “It won’t happen again.”

Setting the monocle on the armrest of the co-pilot’s chair, she flew over and pulled him into a hug.

His grin shrank to a warm genuine one as he carefully returned the embrace. Not that he was afraid of hurting her, but as a full-fledged human adult, hugging tiny fairies presented a unique challenge. “I’m going to miss you, Holly,” he said, hooking his chin over her shoulder.

Hot tears stung her eyes when he used her name, and she curled her arms tighter around his neck, threading her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “I’ll miss you too, Mud Boy.”

A few minutes later, the baffled engineers informed Artemis the ship was sound and ready to fly, to the best of their knowledge. Artemis had smirked at the phrase. He and Butler shook the strangers’ hands before boarding the ship for the final time (for two and a half years). As the two entered, a shielded Holly disembarked, grazing her friends’ elbows as she passed them. They all smiled knowing smiles as the hatch hissed shut.

Holly hovered a few feet away from the two engineers, all necks craned back to watch the launch.

Artemis had designed the tall launching platform to artificially compress a geyser beneath the ship to a meticulously timed breaking point. When the countdown on the inside of her visor reached zero, a column of water erupted from the pad, catapulting the ship into the air much like the hot air pushed a shuttle pod up a chute. One of the engineers yelped upon realizing that, until very recently, he’d been standing on all that pressurized power.

Holly waited with bated breath as the water flew hundreds of meters up before being reclaimed by gravity, waiting to see if the ship would succumb to the same fate. The craft, now but a speck in the cerulean sky, wavered for a few tense moments as gravity fought for dominance. Finally, the engine took over and the ship darted at a shocking speed up into the atmosphere.

When Artemis finally called her she was still at the launch site, lounging in a hot spring with her suit thrown over a tree branch overhead.

“I’m not even gone two hours and you’re already on vacation, commodore?” he asked. Though she’d been careful not to engage the “visual” half of the audio-visual headset, he could still hear and thus deduce where she was.

“Not even gone two hours and you’re already checking in, mud boy?” she teased.

“To be honest, I thought you would have called _me_ an hour ago,” he said. “It was a highly unorthodox launch, Holly. The first of its kind. I thought you would, at the very least, be anxious to know we escaped Earth’s orbit unharmed.” She didn’t have to see him to know he was pouting. And he didn’t have to know she’d been monitoring every news site on or under the earth for reports of mysterious explosions in the upper atmosphere. True, she could have gotten the news straight from the horse, but she was curious how long it would take him to call her.

She shook her head with a smile. She had spoken too soon when she said she would miss him, and presumed too much when she thought even parsecs could keep Artemis Fowl and Holly Short apart.

After their chat, she received an image file. The first was a photo of Artemis and Butler in zero gravity, which she promptly saved to her home server. The second was a picture of a second self-winding spacecraft, this one named _The Commodore._ It came with a note. Under an address in Switzerland, Artemis had written, “In case you change your mind.”

Holly grinned.


End file.
